Systems and methods for processing electronic content

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods are disclosed for processing electronic content, such as text, videos, and images. According to certain embodiments, user interactions with electronic content may be tracked over a plurality of modalities, such as web pages, email, mobile applications, and social media. The tracked user interactions may include copy/paste events, explicit user highlighting, social sharing, and user voting. Key passages of electronic content may be identified based on the tracked user interactions and ranked against one another. Ranking of passages may be based, for example, on a raw or normalized score for the identified key passages. Alternatively, the ranking of a passage may be based on a ratio of user interactions with the passage to total views of the electronic text containing the passage. One or more of the identified key passages (e.g., the highest ranked passages) may be published to one or more applications.

This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No.61/680,117, filed Aug. 6, 2012, which is expressly incorporated hereinby reference to its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure generally relates to analyzing electroniccontent, including text of an electronic document or web page. Morespecifically, and without limitation, the exemplary embodimentsdescribed herein relate to systems and methods for identifying keypassages within electronic content based on, for example, implicit andexplicit user behavior.

BACKGROUND

Various techniques exist for analyzing electronic content andidentifying key passages. Some of these techniques enable usersexplicitly to identify phrases or passages that they consider to be ofimportance. For example, eReaders may provide annotation tools thatallow a user to highlight or otherwise mark text in an eBook or otherelectronic content that the user considers to be particularlyinteresting. There are also techniques that enable users to capture textand multimedia across different modalities. For example, a user may beable to capture text, images, or video from a web page, scanneddocument, or photograph.

Tools also exist for facilitating the identification of “quote” passagesor passages that correspond to quotes that may be attributed to aparticular speaker or other source (e.g., book, news publication, mediaoutlet). Other tools track reader behavior by analyzing copy/pasteevents. These tools may track the portions of an electronic document(e.g., a web page) that a user copies and pastes, such as byhighlighting with the cursor of a mouse or other input device andselecting the “copy” and “paste” functions associated with anapplication or device. Such information may be used by content creatorsfor business intelligence. Moreover, certain implementations ofmonitoring users' copy/paste behavior may be used for providingattribution of copied/pasted material to its source (e.g., pasted textautomatically includes a link or other information attributing it to thesource from which it was copied).

Although the above techniques and solutions are useful in certainapplications, each suffers from one or more drawbacks or disadvantagesthat hinder its suitability for use in other applications. For example,certain known methods of identifying key passages are limited toanalyzing literal quotes. Moreover, some solutions are centered onproviding analytics to content creators (e.g., publishers, writers) andprovide little utility for content users or consumers. For example,methods for analyzing users' copy/paste behavior may provide attributionto a source or provide business intelligence to content creators, butfail to provide useful information to content users or consumers.

SUMMARY

Consistent with the present disclosure, systems and methods are providedfor processing electronic content. Embodiments consistent with thepresent disclosure include computer-implemented systems and methods forprocessing electronic content based on user interactions with theelectronic content. Embodiments consistent with the present disclosuremay also overcome one or more of the problems set forth above.

In accordance with one exemplary embodiment, a system is provided forprocessing electronic content. The system includes a database configuredto store user behavior data from a plurality of modalities, the userbehavior data being received over an electronic network. The system alsoincludes at least one processor in communication with the database. Theprocessor is configured to identify key passages of electronic contentbased on the user behavior data. The processor is further configured torank the identified key passages and publish them to at least oneapplication.

In accordance with another exemplary embodiment, a method is providedfor processing electronic content. According to the method, userinteractions with electronic content are tracked over a plurality ofmodalities. Key passages of the electronic content are identified basedon the tracked user interactions. The identified key passages areranked, and at least one of the identified key passages is published toat least one application.

Before explaining certain embodiments of the present disclosure indetail, it is to be understood that the disclosure is not limited in itsapplication to the details of construction and to the arrangements ofthe components set forth in the following description or illustrated inthe drawings. The disclosure is capable of embodiments in addition tothose described and of being practiced and carried out in various ways.Also, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminologyemployed herein, as well as in the abstract, are for the purpose ofdescription and should not be regarded as limiting.

As such, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the conceptionand features upon which this disclosure is based may readily be utilizedas a basis for designing other structures, methods, and systems forcarrying out the several purposes of the present disclosure. It isimportant, therefore, to recognize that the claims should be regarded asincluding such equivalent constructions insofar as they do not departfrom the spirit and scope of the present disclosure.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute partof this specification, and together with the description, illustrate andserve to explain the principles of various exemplary embodiments.

FIG. 1 is a diagram of an exemplary system environment for implementingembodiments consistent with the present disclosure.

FIG. 2 is an exemplary highlight box depicting publication of anexemplary key passage to an exemplary application, in accordance with anembodiment of the present disclosure.

FIG. 3 is a flow diagram depicting an exemplary method for processingelectronic content, in accordance with an embodiment of the presentdisclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Reference will now be made in detail to the exemplary embodimentsimplemented according to the disclosure, the examples of which areillustrated in the accompanying drawings. Wherever possible, the samereference numbers will be used throughout the drawings to refer to thesame or like parts.

Embodiments herein include computer-implemented methods, tangiblenon-transitory computer-readable mediums, and systems. Thecomputer-implemented methods may be executed, for example, by at leastone processor that receives instructions from a non-transitorycomputer-readable storage medium. Similarly, systems consistent with thepresent disclosure may include at least one processor and memory, andthe memory may be a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium. Asused herein, a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium refers toany type of physical memory on which information or data readable by atleast one processor may be stored. Examples include random access memory(RAM), read-only memory (ROM), volatile memory, nonvolatile memory, harddrives, CD ROMs, DVDs, flash drives, disks, and any other known physicalstorage medium. Singular terms, such as “memory” and “computer-readablestorage medium,” may additionally refer to multiple structures, such aplurality of memories and/or computer-readable storage mediums. Asreferred to herein, a “memory” may comprise any type ofcomputer-readable storage medium unless otherwise specified. Acomputer-readable storage medium may store instructions for execution byat least one processor, including instructions for causing the processorto perform steps or stages consistent with an embodiment herein.Additionally, one or more computer-readable storage mediums may beutilized in implementing a computer-implemented method. The term“computer-readable storage medium” should be understood to includetangible items and exclude carrier waves and transient signals.

Embodiments of the present disclosure provide improved systems andmethods for analyzing electronic content, including text of anelectronic document or web page, for example. The disclosed embodimentsalso provide improved systems and methods for analyzing and scoring keypassages or portions within electronic content.

In certain embodiments, systems and methods are provided for identifyingkey passages or portions in electronic content based on implicit and/orexplicit user channels or interaction. Such systems and methods maycombine known and/or new techniques for identifying key passages inelectronic content. Such systems and methods may also provide for alarger pool from which to determine key passages. For example, systemsand methods of the present disclosure may provide more reliableidentification of key passages or portions by cross-referencing multiplemeans for determining the importance of candidate passages. Due to theenlarged pool of key passages and enhanced reliability of such anapproach, a greater number of applications may utilize such systems andmethods for identifying key passages than prior methods or solutions.

Among other features and advantages, the disclosed embodiments includeidentifying key passages or portions within electronic content byanalyzing implicit and/or explicit user behavior across multiplemodalities. The disclosed embodiments may be used in a variety ofapplications, such as automatically generated pull quotes, contenthighlights or summaries, mobile-friendly content overviews, andanalytics.

FIG. 1 depicts an exemplary system environment for implementingembodiments of the present disclosure. The exemplary embodiment of FIG.1 includes a system 100. System 100 may include one or more serversystems, databases, and/or computing systems configured to receiveinformation from entities in a network, process the information, andcommunicate the information with other entities in the network. In oneembodiment, system 100 may include a content pull server 130, processingengine 140, quote server 150, and quote database 160, as shown in theregion within the dashed line labeled 100 in FIG.1. Further, in oneembodiment, system 100 may transmit and/or receive data to/from variousother components, such as web servers 105, email servers 110, mobile appservers 115, social media servers 120, applications 170, and electronicnetwork 180. More specifically, system 100 may be configured to receivedata over an electronic network (e.g., the Internet), process/analyzethe data to identify key passages of electronic content, and forward theidentified key passages to applications, so that information regardingthe identified key passages may be presented to end users.

The various components of system 100 may include an assembly ofhardware, software, and/or firmware, including a memory, a centralprocessing unit (“CPU”), and/or a user interface. Memory may include anytype of RAM or ROM embodied in a physical storage medium, such asmagnetic storage including floppy disk, hard disk, or magnetic tape;semiconductor storage such as solid state disk (SSD) or flash memory;optical disc storage; or magneto-optical disc storage. A CPU may includeone or more processors for processing data according to a set ofprogrammable instructions or software stored in the memory. Thefunctions of each processor may be provided by a single dedicatedprocessor or by a plurality of processors. Moreover, processors mayinclude, without limitation, digital signal processor (DSP) hardware, orany other hardware capable of executing software. An optional userinterface may include any type or combination of input/output devices,such as a display monitor, keyboard, and/or mouse.

As described above, system 100 may be configured to receive data over anelectronic network, such as the Internet, process/analyze the data toidentify key passages of electronic content, and forward informationregarding the identified key passages to one or more applications. Forexample, in one embodiment, system 100 may operate and/or interact withone or more web servers 105, one or more email servers 110, one or moremobile application servers 115, and/or one or more social media servers120, for the purpose of hosting web pages, email, mobile applicationcontent, or social media content for consumers or other users of theInternet. Additionally, or alternatively, system 100 may acquire or formagreements to acquire data from components 105, 110, 115, and/or 120. Inaddition to components 105, 110, 115, and 120, system 100 may include orinteract with other components (not shown in FIG. 1) to obtainelectronic content over a network, such as electronic network 180, fromwhich key passages may be identified, in accordance with the embodimentsdisclosed herein.

In accordance with certain embodiments, system 100 may include a contentpull server 130, which may be configured to receive data associated withweb pages, emails, mobile application content, social media content, orother electronic data provided by one or more of web servers 105, emailservers 110, mobile application servers 115, social media servers 120,or other servers hosting electronic data, such as servers on electronicnetwork 180. Content pull server 130 may compile such information andsend it to a processing engine 140 for processing and analytics.

In accordance with certain embodiments, processing engine 140 maycomprise a Hadoop cluster including a Hadoop distributed file system(“HDFS”) that is configured to stage input data, perform dataprocessing, and store large-volume data output. It will be appreciatedthat the HDFS may include any desired number or arrangement of clusteredmachines, as needed to provide suitable efficiency, storage space,and/or processing power. It will be appreciated that any type ofdistributed processing system may be used in addition or in thealternative to a Hadoop cluster.

In accordance with certain embodiments, processing engine 140 may beconfigured to identify key passages or portions of electronic contentpulled by content pull server 130 from content servers, such as servers105, 110, 115, and 120, or from other servers or sources on electronicnetwork 180, so as to generate data pertaining to key passages ofelectronic content for presentation to end users through applications170. As discussed in further detail below, processing engine 140 mayidentify key passages or portions of electronic content based onimplicit and/or explicit user behavior across multiple modalities. Forexample, in accordance with certain disclosed embodiments, processingengine 140 may identify key passages of text, images, or videos bytracking one or more of user copy/paste events, social sharing, explicituser highlighting, and user voting.

System 100 may also include a quote server 150, which includes one ormore servers configured to receive outputs from processes performed byprocessing engine 140 and send such outputs to a quote database 160.Quote database 160 may be any suitable type of large scale data storagedevice, which may optionally include any type or combination of slavedatabases, load balancers, dummy servers, firewalls, back-up databases,and/or any other desired database components. The processing engine 140,quote server 150, and/or quote database 160 may also be used forproviding the identified key passages or portions of text, images, orvideos to various applications 170. As discussed in more detail below,applications 170 may be implemented, for example, in the form of a webpage, script, plug-in, applet, feed, or mobile application, as well asin any other method for displaying electronic content to a user.

It will be appreciated that any suitable configuration of software,processors, and data storage devices may be selected to carry out theembodiments of system 100. The software and hardware associated withsystem 100 may be selected to enable quick response to various businessneeds, relatively fast prototyping, and delivery of high-qualitysolutions and results. An emphasis may be placed on achieving highperformance through scaling on a distributed architecture. The selectedsoftware and hardware may be flexible, to allow for quickreconfiguration, repurposing, and prototyping for research purposes. Thedata flows and processes described herein are merely exemplary, and maybe reconfigured, merged, compartmentalized, and combined as desired. Theexemplary modular architecture described herein may be desirable forperforming data intensive analysis. A modular architecture may also bedesired to enable efficient integration with external platforms, such ascontent analysis systems, various plug-ins and services, etc. Finally,the exemplary hardware and modular architecture may be provided withvarious system monitoring, reporting, and troubleshooting tools.

In accordance with certain embodiments, processing engine 140 mayperform various methods for identifying key passages or portions ofelectronic content by tracking implicit and/or explicit user behavior.In accordance with certain embodiments, user behavior may be trackedacross multiple modalities, such as web pages, email, mobileapplications, and social media. In one embodiment, user behavior may betracked and recorded across multiple modalities in the content of asingle body of text. For example, a single news article may be presentedto users in a variety of forms, such as a web page, email, mobileapplication content, or social media content. Indeed, one user may viewand interact with a single news article in each of these fourmodalities. Accordingly, the disclosed embodiments provide for trackingusers' interactions with electronic text or other content across each ofthese modalities.

In accordance with certain embodiments, user behavior is tracked bymonitoring user copy/paste events, social sharing, explicithighlighting, and user voting. In each instance, tracking of userbehavior may be performed transparently to the user. Alternatively, auser may be made aware of particular instances in which the system istracking the user's behavior, for example, to allow the user tounderstand the role of his or her interactions with the text or othercontent in determining interesting passages of text or other content inan electronic document.

User copy/paste events may be tracked, for example, by using Javascriptto detect which pieces of text users are copying and pasting from anelectronic document, such as a web page. Embodiments consistent with thepresent disclosure may also track numerous instances of social sharing,such as, but not limited to, emailing a document, passage or hyperlink;sharing/posting a document, passage, or hyperlink via a social mediaapplication (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, Stumbleupon); orcommenting on electronic content using a “comment” feature associatedwith the electronic content. Instances of explicit highlighting ofpassages of text by a user, such as by graphically emphasizing orannotating displayed text, may also be tracked across multiplemodalities. For example, a user may highlight a passage of text byclicking a mouse button and dragging a cursor across the text. Uponreleasing the mouse button, a popup window may be displayed to the usernext to the highlighted text to confirm the user's desire to mark thehighlighted text as a key passage (e.g., a favorite quote). User voting(e.g., via the “Like” function provided by Facebook or the “+1” buttonprovided by Google+) may also be analyzed to identify interestingelectronic content, including key passages of text from withinelectronic content. According to certain embodiments, one or more ofthese user behaviors may be tracked and recorded in order to identifykey passages from within electronic text that users deem interesting. Itis to be understood that the disclosed types of user behavior (i.e.,copy/paste events, social sharing, explicit highlighting, user voting)may be tracked in accordance with any appropriate means and tracking ofsuch behaviors is not limited to the exemplary methods for tracking userbehavior discussed above. Moreover, other forms of user behavior mayalso be tracked, recorded, and analyzed in order to identify keypassages of electronic text, in accordance with the present disclosure.

In accordance with certain embodiments, various statistical techniquesand/or machine learning processes are applied to user behavior data toobtain a ranked list of interesting passages or portions of electroniccontent. For example, passages associated with user behavior areanalyzed to identify overlapping pieces of text. Such passages may betotally distinct, totally identical, overlap partially, or overlapcompletely (i.e., one passage contains the other). This information maybe used to determine that the same or similar content is beingcopied/pasted, highlighted and/or shared across multiple modalities andby multiple users. In one embodiment, the total number of overlaps maybe counted to determine a score for each passage.

Further, the machine learning processes may be used to filter (i.e.,reject) snippets or passages of text that appear to be invalid. Forexample, these processes may filter out terms copied solely for use assearch terms, instances in which an entire article is copied, and/orvery short segments (e.g., a single word that is copied/pasted). In oneembodiment, passages of text are filtered out of consideration if theydo not contain a verb. Moreover, the machine learning processes mayfilter passages of text based on a variety of other features, such asthe number of words in the passage, number of sentences in the passage,capitalization, presence of quotation marks, presence of endingpunctuation, and/or other grammatical analyses. By using theseprocesses, the most important (i.e., “quotable”) excerpts of text may beidentified and uninteresting passages may be discarded.

In one embodiment, passages of text within an electronic document may beranked against one another based on the total instances of userinteraction with each of those passages. For example, one passage of anarticle may rank higher than other passages from the same article ifthat passage has been copied/pasted and/or highlighted by users morethan the other passages from the article. Similarly, one passage of anarticle may rank higher than other passages from different articles ifthat passage has been copied/pasted and/or highlighted by users morethan the other passages from those articles. In another embodiment,ranking of passages may be performed at the user-level, identifyingpassages that are most interesting to a single user based on acomparison of that user's interactions with a variety of passages from asingle electronic document or multiple electronic documents. In yetanother embodiment, passages and/or user behaviors associated therewithmay be weighted according to certain criteria. For example, in oneembodiment, user copy/pasting events may be deemed a more reliableindicator that a passage is a “key” passage than user highlighting of apassage that does not result in a copy/paste event for that passage.Alternatively, explicit user highlighting may be deemed a more reliableindicator of a passage's importance than a user copy/paste event and,thus, weighted more heavily than user copy/paste events.

In one embodiment, each user action may be associated with a point valuebased on the perceived reliability of the user action as an indicator ofa passage's importance. For example, copy/paste events may be assigned apoint value of 1.0, explicit user highlighting events may be assigned apoint value of 2.0, and user sharing events may be assigned a pointvalue of 1.5. According to this scheme, each time a passage is copiedand pasted by any user, 1.0 point value will be added to a raw score forthat passage. Similarly, explicit user highlighting events and usersharing events may add 2.0 and 1.5 points, respectively, to the rawscore for that passage. Once all user actions associated with a passagehave been accounted for and used to create a total raw score for eachpassage within a given electronic document, the passage(s) with thehighest raw score(s) may be identified as the key passage(s) for theelectronic document. Moreover, those passages with the highest rawscores across all electronic documents (e.g., all articles) for a givenweb site may be selected as the key passages for the entire web site. Inone embodiment, these raw scores may be normalized prior to comparisonacross articles to account for factors that may disproportionately favorkey passages from some articles (e.g., highly trafficked articles)vis-a-vis other articles (e.g., lesser trafficked articles). Forexample, each raw score may be converted to a Wilson score to betterindicate the likelihood that a random person viewing an article wouldconsider a passage within the article to be interesting, irrespective ofthe popularity of the article as a whole vis-a-vis other articles on theweb site that hosts the article. Alternatively, or additionally, thisnormalization may be accomplished by weighting the raw score of apassage based, at least in part, on the total number of views of theelectronic document or article containing the passage.

In accordance with one embodiment, the ranking of key passages orportions against one another may consider the number of tracked userbehaviors (e.g., copy/paste events, highlighting, sharing) for each keypassage or portion as compared with the number of page views for thepage (e.g., web page) containing the key passage or portion. Forexample, in one embodiment, a first passage identified as a key passagemay be ranked higher (i.e., deemed more interesting) than a secondpassage if the first passage was copied and pasted by most users whoviewed the article containing the passage, regardless of whether thesecond passage had more copy/paste events overall. This may allow keypassages from articles with a smaller number of page views potentiallyto rank higher than key passages from articles with a higher number ofpage views, so long as the ratio of copy/paste events (or other trackeduser behaviors) to page views is higher for the article with the smallernumber of page views than the article with the higher number of pageviews.

In accordance with another embodiment, the ranking of key passages orportions may be determined, at least in part, by editorial intervention.For example, editors associated with applications 170 may adjust theformula used to rank key passages or portions. These editors may alsomake manual adjustments to the rankings of key passages portions afterthey have been automatically ranked in accordance with the embodimentsdescribed herein. Editors may manually increase or decrease scores,weights, or rankings assigned to passages to increase or decreaseexposure to those passages. This allows a content creator, for example,to guide content consumers to content that the content consumers wouldlikely deem interesting, even if content consumers have not yetexpressed enough interest in the content for it to be deemed the mostinteresting content.

Certain of the disclosed embodiments also provide for post-processing ofthe key passages to prepare the key passages for publishing to end usersvia applications, such as applications 170. For example, the identifiedkey passages or portions may be processed to yield text (e.g., “quotes”)suitable for publishing to particular applications or modalities. Forinstance, larger portions of text (e.g., larger “quotes”) may beexcerpted for publishing to a web page designed for display on a desktopor laptop computer, and smaller portions of text (e.g., smaller“quotes”) may be excerpted for publishing to mobile applications. Inaccordance with one embodiment, variations in content identified as keypassages may be resolved as part of the post-processing. For example, ifsome users copied/pasted and/or highlighted an entire sentence of anelectronic document frequently, but other users copied/pasted and/orhighlighted only a particular phrase within that sentence frequently,the post-processing may determine whether to display only the particularphrase or the entire sentence based on a comparison of the number ofusers that performed each action.

The identified quotes may be used in a wide variety of applications,such as, but not limited to, automatically generated summaries,automatically generated pull quotes, automatically generated highlights,mobile-friendly content overviews, a compact news dashboard, quotabilityanalytics, insight into trends in media consumption, viral imagery,teasers, and headline alternatives. Thus, in contrast to priortechniques, which were used primarily to provide analytics to contentcreators (e.g., publishers and writers), the embodiments consistent withthe present disclosure can transform data collected through analysis ofuser behavior into a new modality suitable for display to contentconsumers (e.g., readers) in a wide variety of applications. In oneembodiment, enhanced analytics may also be provided to content creators,as discussed above (e.g., quotability analytics, article popularity,insight into trends in media consumption, data on social sharing andperformance). These analytics may be used by content creators to guidethe creation of future content likely to be of interest to contentconsumers. Content creators may also use the identified key passages indeveloping advertisements, pull quotes, or teasers for drawing trafficto their content (i.e., drawing users to their web site). Moreover,embodiments consistent with the present disclosure may be used bycontent creators to help them better to understand their user base,increase recirculation of content, enhance the browsing experience oftheir web site or mobile application, and/or better understand thecontent that they should share through social media channels.

In one embodiment, the identified key passages or portions of electroniccontent may be recirculated, such that the highest ranking (i.e., mostinteresting) key passages or portions are displayed in a prominentposition, as determined by the original creator of the content. Forexample, the highest ranking passages or quotes from a news and opinionweb site may be displayed in a prominent position on that web site'shome page. As discussed above, the highest ranking passages or quotesmay be determined algorithmically and/or through editorial intervention.In another embodiment, key passages may be displayed to users in alanding page, which may be dedicated primarily to the display of keypassages or quotes from throughout a web site, mobile application, etc.For example, a news and opinion web site may provide a landing pagewithin that site that presents key passages or quotes from throughoutthe web site. Further, the landing page may allow users to filterpassages or quotes by type (e.g., news, opinion, sports, science,politics) and navigate to the articles from which the passages or quoteswere obtained by clicking on the passages or quotes. In similar fashion,the key passages or quotes may also be displayed in a mobileapplication, such as in a section within a prominent page or view withinthe application or in a page or view dedicated explicitly to the displayof key passages or quotes. For example, a mobile interface may beprovided enabling users to explore news (or other content) using short,mobile-friendly passages or quotes, rather than by exploring the newsvia longer, less mobile-friendly articles.

FIG. 2 is an exemplary highlight box depicting publication of anexemplary key passage to an exemplary application, in accordance with anembodiment of the present disclosure. FIG. 2 depicts an exemplary keypassage, as may be displayed to a user in a landing page, in accordancewith certain embodiments. As described herein, a landing page may beprovided to display key passages of text gathered from many articlespublished on a web site based on user's interactions with those articles(e.g., copy/paste events, explicit highlighting, social sharing, uservoting). Each key passage may be displayed in a separate containerwithin the landing page, such as highlight box 200 in FIG. 2. Inaddition to the key passage 210, a highlight box may also indicate thetitle 220 of the article from which the key passage was obtained, aswell as other information that may allow a user further to interact withthe key passage.

In one embodiment, a highlight box 200 may contain a share button 230 toallow users to share the key passage with others through one or moreservices, such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Highlight box 200may also contain a boost or like button 240 to enable a user to indicatethat he or she likes the key passage 210 (or otherwise finds itinteresting). A trash or dislike button 250 may also be provided withinhighlight box 200 to enable a user to express his or her distaste for ordisinterest in the key passage 210. Alternatively, or additionally, thedislike or trash button 250 may be used to cause the key passage 210,and its associated highlight box 200, to be removed from display withinthe landing page. Thus, a user who navigates away from the landing pageand later returns to the landing page may not be presented with the keypassage that he or she disliked. Moreover, instances of user sharing,liking/boosting, and disliking/trashing caused by users' interactionswith buttons 230, 240, and 250, respectively, may affect a key passage'sraw or normalized score, in similar fashion as to that described above.In other words, users interactions via the landing page with passagesthat have already been identified as key passages may affect whetherthose passages remain key passages in the future.

In accordance with other disclosed embodiments, users may highlight orquote content throughout the web using a web browser plug-in (e.g., aGoogle Chrome plug-in or Bookmarklet tool). For example, this featuremay allow a user explicitly to highlight a passage of text from any webpage viewed in the web browser containing this plug-in to indicate thatthe passage is of particular interest to the user. In a similar fashionto that described above, information regarding these user highlights maybe gathered and processed, such that they may be ranked against oneanother. In one embodiment, upon reaching a threshold rank (i.e., athreshold number of users has highlighted the passage), these highlightsmay be reflected in the original web page. Accordingly, all futureviewers of the web page may be able quickly to identify a key passagewithin an article once the passage has been highlighted by viewers ofthe web page a minimum number of times. In one embodiment, viewers maydetermine whether to activate this feature, such that the web page maybe displayed with or without highlighting applied to the key passages.Further, viewers may determine the manner in which the key passages arehighlighted (e.g., underlined, italicized, different color font,different color background). As described above, these explicithighlights may feed into quote database 160. Moreover, as discussedabove, the ranking of key passages may give higher weight to theseexplicit highlights than to copy and paste events, or vice versa.

In accordance with one embodiment, users may share identified keypassages as images or text using social media or other channels. Forexample, a user may share (e.g., via Facebook or Twitter) a particularpassage that the user has highlighted using the above-described webbrowser plug-in by selecting an appropriate button from within the webpage or the web browser plug-in. Alternatively, the user may share aparticular passage that has been automatically identified as a keypassage using the methods described herein and displayed to the user ona “Top Quotes” section of a web page or on a landing page directed tosuch quotes by selecting a button associated with the key passage onthat page.

According to another embodiment, a user may be associated with a userprofile to store information regarding the user's interest in certaintypes of documents (e.g., certain genres of articles) and/or certainpassages from within documents. Thus, when a user views an article, theuser's profile may be updated to reflect the user's interest in thearticle. Further, user actions within the article, such as copy/pasteevents, explicit highlighting, social sharing, and user voting, may betracked on the user's profile. In one embodiment, the user may beprompted to identify whether the user would like a particular action tobe associated with the user's profile, such that the user may prohibitan atypical interaction (e.g., viewing an “uninteresting” article forwork/research purposes) from influencing the user's overall profile. Inaddition to updating a user's profile based on automated observations ofthe user's actions, a user may also be able manually to edit his or herprofile to indicate an interest in certain types of documents, authors,articles, passages, etc. In certain embodiments, information in a user'sprofile may be analyzed to identify and recommend documents or articlesthat the user may find interesting based on his or her previous actions(e.g., views of similar articles, highlighting of passages related toother articles).

FIG. 3 is a flow diagram depicting an exemplary method for processingelectronic content, in accordance with an embodiment of the presentdisclosure. As shown in FIG. 3, user interactions with electroniccontent are tracked over a plurality of modalities at step 300. Forexample, user interactions with electronic content, such as text, video,and images, published on web pages, email, mobile applications, andsocial media through web servers 105, email servers 110, mobile appservers 115, social media servers 120, or through other means, such asother servers on electronic network 180, may be tracked and gathered bycontent pull server 130.

Key passages of the electronic content may be identified based on thetracked user interactions at step 310. For example, key passages may beidentified using processing engine 140 based on one or more of usercopy/paste events, explicit highlighting, social sharing, and uservoting, as discussed in further detail herein. Moreover, these keypassages may be stored using quote server 150 and/or quote database 160.At step 320, the identified key passages are ranked. As discussed above,in one embodiment, a key passage may be ranked based on the ratio ofuser interactions with a key passage within an electronic text to totalviews of the electronic text. Alternatively, in another embodimentdiscussed above, a key passage may be ranked according to a raw ornormalized score associated with the key passage. As discussed above,this score may be determined by the number and type of user interactionswith the key passage. Moreover, each type of user interaction with thekey passage (copy/paste, explicit highlighting, social sharing, uservoting) may be assigned a different point value. According to certainembodiments, the identified key passages may be filtered based on one ormore of the number of words in the passage, the number of sentences inthe passage, the capitalization of the passage, the presence ofquotation marks in the passage, and the presence of ending punctuationin the passage.

Key passages may be published to at least one application at step 330.For example, the highest ranked of the identified key passages may beselected for publication to one or more applications. Applications towhich key passages may be published include, for example, a landing page(e.g., a web page dedicated to the display of key passages) and arecirculator tool (e.g., a container for display within one or more webpages to highlight a select number of key passages and draw traffic fromthose pages to other pages within a web site). Moreover, userinteractions with key passages published in applications may also betracked to modify the scores and/or rankings of the key passages in asimilar manner to that described above with respect to user interactionsprior to publication of a key passage to an application. For example, auser may be enabled to share, like/boost, or dislike/trash a key passagepublished to an application by using appropriate buttons (e.g., buttons230, 240, and 250 in FIG. 2) associated with the key passage in theapplication.

In the preceding specification, various preferred embodiments have beendescribed with reference to the accompanying drawings. It will, however,be evident that various modifications and changes may be made thereto,and additional embodiments may be implemented, without departing fromthe broader scope of the invention as set forth in the claims thatfollow. The specification and drawings are accordingly to be regarded inan illustrative rather than restrictive sense.

For example, advantageous results still could be achieved if steps ofthe disclosed techniques were performed in a different order and/or ifcomponents in the disclosed systems were combined in a different mannerand/or replaced or supplemented by other components. Otherimplementations are within the scope of the following exemplary claims.

Therefore, it is intended that the disclosed embodiments and examples beconsidered as exemplary only, with a true scope of the presentdisclosure being indicated by the following claims and theirequivalents.

1-24. (canceled)
 25. A content filtering system for filtering one ormore electronic content elements for distribution to one or moreelectronic applications, the system including: a database storinginstructions for filtering one or more electronic content items; and oneor more processors configured to execute the instructions to perform amethod, the method including: receiving one or more electronic contentitems; receiving indication of one or more user interactions by a firstuser with the one or more electronic content items; determining one ormore key passages of the one or more electronic content items that thefirst user interacted with; determining a ranking order of the one ormore key passages; and transmitting electronic content information toone or more computer applications associated with the first use.
 26. Thesystem of claim 25, further includes: assigning a score to each userinteraction with the one or more electronic content items.
 27. Thesystem of claim 26, wherein assigning a score to each user interactionincludes: determining how the first user interacted with the one or moreelectronic content items; and weighting user interactions according to apredetermined scale.
 28. The system of claim 26, wherein assigning ascore to each user interaction further includes: generating a raw scorefor the one or more electronic content items based on aggregating thescores assigned to each user interaction.
 29. The system of claim 25,wherein a user profile is updated, including: receiving a notificationfrom the first user indicating whether the first user has requested eachuser interaction to be associated with the user profile.
 30. The systemof claim 28, further including: performing a behavior analysis based onthe one or more user interactions and a type of electronic contentinteracted with by the first user and comparing the user profile to oneor more stored profiles of other users; and identifying one or moreusers with similar behavioral interests based on the behavioralanalysis.
 31. The system of claim 30, further including: recirculatingthe electronic content with the highest raw scores to the identified oneor more users with similar behavioral interest as the first user.
 32. Acomputer-implemented method for filtering one or more electronic contentitems, the method including: receiving one or more electronic contentitems; receiving indication of one or more user interactions by a firstuser with the one or more electronic content items; determining one ormore key passages of the one or more electronic content items that thefirst user interacted with; determining a ranking order of the one ormore key passages; and transmitting electronic content information toone or more computer applications associated with the first use.
 33. Themethod of claim 32, further including: assigning a score to each userinteraction with the one or more electronic content items.
 34. Themethod of claim 33, wherein assigning a score to each user interactionincludes: determining how the first user interacted with the one or moreelectronic content items; and weighting each user interaction accordingto a predetermined scale.
 35. The method of claim 33, wherein assigninga score to each user interaction includes: generating a raw score forthe one or more electronic content items based on aggregating the scoresassigned to each user interaction.
 36. The method of claim 32, wherein auser profile is updated, including: receiving a notification from thefirst user indicating whether the first user has requested the one ormore user interactions to be associated with the user profile.
 37. Themethod of claim 35, further including: performing a behavior analysisbased on each user interaction and a type of electronic contentinteracted with by the first user and comparing the user profile to oneor more stored profiles of other users; and identifying one or moreusers with similar behavioral interests based on the behavioralanalysis.
 38. The method of claim 37, further including: recirculatingthe one or more electronic content items with the highest raw scores tothe identified one or more users with similar behavioral interest as thefirst user.
 39. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storinginstructions for filtering one or more electronic content elements fordistribution to one or more electronic applications, the instructionsconfigured to cause at least one processor to perform operations, theoperations including: receiving one or more electronic content items;receiving indication of one or more user interactions by a first userwith the one or more electronic content items; determining one or morekey passages of the one or more electronic content items that the firstuser interacted with; determining a ranking order of the one or more keypassages; and transmitting electronic content information to one or morecomputer applications associated with the first user.
 40. The computerreadable medium of claim 39, further including: assigning a score toeach user interaction with the one or more electronic content items. 41.The computer readable medium of claim 40, wherein assigning a score toeach user interaction further includes: determining how the first userinteracted with the one or more electronic content items; and weightingeach user interaction according to a predetermined scale.
 42. Thecomputer readable medium of claim 40, wherein assigning a score to eachuser interaction further includes: generating a raw score for the one ormore electronic content items based on aggregating the scores assignedto the user interactions.
 43. The computer readable medium of claim 42,further including: performing a behavior analysis based on the userinteractions and a type of electronic content interacted with by thefirst user and comparing the user profile to one or more stored profilesof other users; and identifying one or more users with similarbehavioral interests based on the behavioral analysis.
 44. The computerreadable medium of claim 43, further comprising: recirculating the oneor more electronic content items with the highest raw scores to theidentified one or more users with similar behavioral interest as thefirst user.